Claims Recession Affecting Smokers Quitting

The National Cancer Research Institute is claiming that the number of people deciding to stop smoking is going down.

In 2007 around 32% of smokers claimed they had tried to quit smoking in the previous three months. The number has now dropped to 17% since the recession.

Professor Robert West, director of tobacco studies at the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre, has also been tracking the number of smokers and their quitting patterns in England. His figures show the rate of quitting slowed down when recession hit the UK economy.

Vanessa Price is from NHS Suffolk, she told Heart, "The reasons why smokers smoke do tend to become different and one of the things they do quote is stress and that's why it is very difficult in recession because they are worried about the support they need in their day to day lives."

The National Cancer Research Institute believes it could be linked to people being stressed about money and not wanting to quit. However, the number of people quitting smoking in Norfolk and Suffolk is still going up. NHS Norfolk had 4500 quitters last year and Yarmouth and Waveney had 2000.

However, Price also told us, "We do think our figures are very healthy and we do think we are actually meeting our targets well. But, we don't get complacent with that, we do always continually think about new ways of helping people to quit and how we can advertise and keep people interested."

For more information on quitting smoking call Suffolk's Stop Smoking Service on 0800 085 6037 or Norfolk's Stop Smoking Service on 0800 0854 113.

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